as small as a world and as large as alone, silversarcasm: how can you not see ableism as a...

1:44pm August 2, 2014

how can you not see ableism as a feminist issue

autistic girls, especially black autistic girls, are misdiagnosed and underdiagnosed because of the focus on white cis boys and how they present as autistic

disabled girls and women often have their consent violated, both in medical procedures and otherwise, our bodies and minds are often not considered are own and we are dismissed as not having the capacity to make our own decisions

on top of that many disabled girls are seen as delusional and their speaking out about the abuse they have face, by whatever communication method, is often seen as them making things up and over reacting

many disabled women are fetishised and seen as an outrageous ‘thing’ to fuck, but are not seen as human

disabled girls, especially physically disabled girls, do not live up to ideas of beauty in our society and often have extreme self esteem issues

disabled women and girls face more shit than you could ever know and I need you to understand

Ableism. Is. A. Feminist. Issue.

Not only that, but everything about how women are weaker than men both physically and emotionally and therefore shouldn’t be able to do the things that men are allowed to do? That’s ableism too. So are most of the ways that feminists try to disprove it. (They try to shift the ableism onto someone else, instead of dismantling the ableism altogether.)

Every form of oppression has a thread of ableism running through it. Not just because there are disabled members of every oppressed group, but because one aspect of oppression has always been declaring an oppressed group inferior on the basis of ability, which is ableism no matter how you see it. The idea that black people are intellectually inferior is ableism, drapetomania was ableism, these things are ableism in the service of racism.

There is ableism in the service of every ism, and it always takes similar forms:

1. Declare a group of people categorically inferior on basis of ability, and then treat them the same way you would treat disabled people.

2. Additionally, if possible, find a way to medicalize normal traits of the group in question.

(So, for black people who wanted to escape slavery, the medicalized category of drapetomania was created. For women who were insufficiently feminine, they could be locked up in mental institutions for “maladjustment to the feminine role”. Some groups of people, such as gay people, had their entire existence medicalized as a mental illness. Trans people still do, and there’s a lot of argument in the trans community as to whether this is good or bad, considering it helps us get the hormones and surgery many of us need.)

So whenever you look towards ending an ism, always look for the ableism inside of it, I guarantee you it is there in one or the other of those two forms if not both entangled with each other. And without getting rid of the ableism, you’ll never get rid of the rest of the ism.

And before anyone asks? No, this does not mean that ableism is more important than other isms, or that ableism causes all other isms. It just means that it’s inextricably intertwined with other isms at a deep level. Don’t read anything into this that I’m not actually saying, and everything will go much more smoothly.